


The Marital Happiness of Mrs. Benjamin Solo

by LinearA



Series: An Irregular and Possibly Abbreviated Series of Stories Concerning Skywalkers, Solos, et al, Largely Unsuitable for the Reading of Young People, but Hopefully Pleasing to Adult Persons Taking Interest in the Personages Involved [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Cunnilingus, Established Relationship, Extremely Bad Science, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Sexual Shame, The Author Regrets Everything, Victorian Diction, Writing like you're paid by the word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-23 08:09:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23008390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinearA/pseuds/LinearA
Summary: A sequel to "Mr. Solo and Miss Wellfound."  After the honeymoon, Rey finds a manual of highly scientific advice for married men in Ben's library, and is deeply shocked by what she reads.This was probably not what the prompter had in mind.  I'm very sorry.  It's very silly.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: An Irregular and Possibly Abbreviated Series of Stories Concerning Skywalkers, Solos, et al, Largely Unsuitable for the Reading of Young People, but Hopefully Pleasing to Adult Persons Taking Interest in the Personages Involved [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638391
Comments: 141
Kudos: 407





	1. Edifying Scientific Literature

**Author's Note:**

  * For [okaypianist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaypianist/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey was not entirely a novice at the daily duties of the mistress of a household; her guardian, having never married, had as she grew older made her the _de facto_ lady of the house. She was accustomed to playing hostess, and if anything did it rather less than she had before, for despite his promotions Ben still held less lofty positions of charitable responsibility than his uncle, and fewer persons felt the need of swaying him to their views. There was an initial influx of callers, as a number of persons were eager to see for themselves the novel innovation of Mr. Skywalker’s having married his ward to his nephew rather than himself. But as the stream of visitors tapered, Mrs. Bates (who had heard, perhaps, a dropped word or two from Ben before his marriage on the subject of his intended’s inclination to mischief) began increasingly to fear the day when the young lady would find herself with nothing to do.

_My dear Uncle Poe,_

_You had asked me, you may remember, to write and let you know at once if there were any more amusing developments in Mr. Ben's affairs of the heart. I was at the time quite sure that there would only be more of the same (stomping, storming, brooding, etc.), but there has been a rather astonishing one: in what I can only assume was some unfortunate accident, the poor girl has agreed to have him. I can only hope her manners are as indelicate as his of the feelings of others, so she'll feel no great scruple over breaking it off when she realizes what she's engaged herself to._

_Naturally I had no great details on the subject from him; he only came charging up the stairs shouting that he was to be married and demanding to know where Mr. McTack was. As if his valet were the person to whom it was most needful to deliver this news! As if it were not _my_ duties most concerned with the introduction of a _wife_ into the household! How like a bachelor, to think his marriage would turn on his wedding coat, and not his kitchen, his account-book, and his immortal soul! (But you would hardly know better yourself, would you, my rapscallion uncle!)_

_Well, if she is unable to extricate herself from his clutches before the day which is set (terribly soon!) for the wedding, he will learn better._

_Your affectionate niece,  
Beatrice Bates._

* * *

_My dear sir,_

_I have had great difficulty beginning this letter, purely over the matter of the salutation, for how ought I to address you? I cannot call you, as I have, "my dear guardian," since you are not any longer my guardian, and I have not yet got your permission to call you "Uncle Luke," as Ben does. (As I write this, Ben is writing to his mother. We know perfectly well that you two will compare any accounts we give of ourselves for the faintest sign of discrepancy, and if this letter is blotted, it is from my lifting my pen to ask my husband what he is writing, so that we may agree and not worry you with even the shadow of a suspicion of disagreement between us.) At any rate, please forgive the formal address as the confusion of a flustered and flighty new bride, and we will settle the matter of what I shall call you shortly, as we will be coming back to town within the week._

_To own the truth, I am somewhat relieved; the country house is very beautiful and the quiet at night is marvelous, but Ben has some obscure and terrible rivalry with the manager of the estate, Mr. Poe, and they spend all day having nonsensical arguments about horses, which to my ignorant mind seem as though they would be easily settled by both of them simply _getting on with it and going out riding,_ but no, they would rather stand there in the barn and bicker all the morning, and then continue to bicker again after tea, too. (Ben wishes me to cross out the above, as he claims it is inaccurate and makes him sound as though he had a monomania. I will grant that it may be a slight exaggeration, but I deny that it will make you think him a monomaniac; you know him well enough to know that he has not one fixed idea from which he cannot be moved, but rather seven or eight.)_

_Now he will have vengeance upon me by complaining to his mother that I am ungrateful, for the truth, I must own, is that the argument is extended at least as much by his uxoriousness as by his stubbornness; he will not go out riding with Mr. Poe because I cannot ride so well as to go out with them, and he does not think any of his father's horses gentle enough for a lady to learn on. Mr. Poe, who is the uncle of Ben's housekeeper Mrs. Bates, promises that at the next auction he goes to he will bid on a gelding, and then we may come back, and the two of them resolve their quarrel in a sensible fashion._

_Mr. Poe calls me "Mrs. Benjamin Solo," and it remains quite a shock to me that there should be any such person, let alone that _I_ should answer to the name. But soon we shall be back in town with you, and I shall be as I have always been,_

_Yours affectionately,  
Rey_

* * *

_My dear Uncle Poe,_

_Thank you very much indeed for your warning that my Mr. and Mrs. Solo were intending to return home, for if you had not alerted me, I should have been taken entirely by surprise. My good young mistress, who is something much closer to sensible than her husband, was properly shocked to discover that he had omitted to inform us of their return, but truly she is much too soft-hearted, for the moment he gave her a hangdog look, she seemed to forgive him immediately, and I was left to do the rest of the scolding in order to be sure that the point came home._

_Truly, she's as dear a thing as you say, and blessedly economical; I was very much afraid, when it first became apparent that he was in love, that Mr. Ben had patterned his life after Tertius Lydgate or some other of the many virtuous but passionate young gentlemen in literature who give their hearts to vain little flibbertigibbets and bring themselves to ruin. Indeed, if anyone is going to bring the household to ruin at present, it's Mr. Ben himself; his wife tells him what she means to be comical tales of her childhood, and he grows distraught and makes over more money to orphanages and schools than the budget can support. Not that I don't sympathize with his reasons; she has been hard done by, the poor lamb, and hardly seems to know it._

_In any case, she's a most undemanding mistress, and hardly disturbs the household more than if Mr. Ben had acquired a parakeet instead of a wife. I rather suspect that may change, however, should she happen to become bored. In that event, my dear Uncle, please pray for us all._

_Your affectionate niece,  
Beatrice Bates_

* * *

Rey did not expect to be bored. The members of a number of charitable organizations with which Mr. Skywalker and his sister were concerned had previously condescended to remark amongst themselves that Miss Wellfound was quite presentable for having been, as they considered she must have been, rescued by Mr. Skywalker from terrible degradation. Upon her becoming Mrs. Benjamin Solo, they sat up rather smartly and began to regard her as a person of some possible significance, and Mrs. Han Solo was invited to invite her new daughter-in-law to the boards of assorted Ladies’ Auxiliaries.

To her dismay, however, she discovered that a place on the board entailed a great deal of talking, a great deal of tea, a great many extraordinarily boring persons, and absolutely no actual _work._ She began to see why Mr. Skywalker had such a perpetually weary and gruff manner when his sister reported that he had been, in his youth, the sweetest-tempered man alive. Mrs. Han Solo herself, through a marvelous skill in saying just the right things, drinking the exactly correct quantity of tea, and ingeniously pretending not to be intolerably bored, somehow managed to make sure that the boards actually disbursed the money which they controlled in sensible ways. Rey, however, could not get the knack of it at all.

“The talking takes up entire hours,” she complained to her husband. “And we must sit there and listen to everyone’s suggestions until the ladies proposing them are done speaking, even when it’s evident from the first sentence that it’s all stuff and nonsense, and the ladies have no idea what they’re speaking of!”

“It’s much the same thing on the principle boards,” Ben observed. “Uncle Luke persistently nominates me for secretary, and I believe it’s because he knows that while I am writing I cannot interrupt.”

“Perhaps I ought to see whether I can be secretary. It would be something to do, at the very least.”

“No society in their right minds will make you secretary, my love; your penmanship is abominable.”

Rey’s face grew stormy at the insult, but he smiled as he said it, and held out his hands, and consequently she delivered her reprimand of his manners from a place on his knee. The reprimand was somewhat abbreviated by the frequency of his kisses, and the whole dispute amiably resolved by their repairing upstairs to Rey’s bedroom.

But all the same, Rey was more idle than she might have supposed, for just as the societies regarded her in a different light after she was married, so too was Ben seen to be a more stable and responsible prospect as a married man than he had been as a bachelor. He was given more duties than he had had before, leaving Rey to face some hours every day in her new home without her husband in it.

Rey was not entirely a novice at the daily duties of the mistress of a household; her guardian, having never married, had as she grew older made her the _de facto_ lady of the house. She was accustomed to playing hostess, and if anything did it rather less than she had before, for despite his promotions Ben still held less lofty positions of charitable responsibility than his uncle, and fewer persons felt the need of swaying him to their views. There was an initial influx of callers, as a number of persons were eager to see for themselves the novel innovation of Mr. Skywalker’s having married his ward to his nephew rather than himself. But as the stream of visitors tapered, Mrs. Bates (who had heard, perhaps, a dropped word or two from Ben before his marriage on the subject of his intended’s inclination to mischief) began increasingly to fear the day when the young lady would find herself with nothing to do.

Mrs. Bates was technically not Mr. Poe’s niece but rather his youngest cousin, a small person with very lively orange hair and very decided opinions on how a decent household ought to be managed. In her view, without her help, Benjamin Solo would have descended into barbarism the moment he left his mother’s house. Without her vigilant attention to the responsibilities of a respectable domestic establishment, Ben would have purchased a dozen subscriptions to periodicals promising to deliver more literature than any man could hope to read, or would never have been at home to friendly calls from his family, or would have admitted of evening visits from dreadful Mr. Snoke. Mrs. Bates, having taken one look at Mr. Snoke, took the liberty of summarily and conclusively forbidding the premises. She felt no need to tell anyone that he had ever called, since it seemed obvious to her that his mere presence on the doorstep had been the result of a grave error of some kind. That Mr. Snoke had been in possession of Ben’s card at all had made Mrs. Bates quite dubious about her employer’s strength as a judge of character, but on meeting Rey she had been much reassured. Not _so_ reassured, however, as to be willing to leave the young lady to her own devices.

First it was the household accounts. Mrs. Bates had managed these without incident since Ben had first set up a bachelor’s establishment, but the moment she received the impression that Rey might be tapping her foot, she feigned a some confusion over the numbers and requested the young Mrs. Solo’s help. Ben was mildly astonished to discover his wife at the little table in the kitchen with the books open before her, her tongue protruding slightly from the corner of her mouth, and Mrs. Bates desperately attempting to answer a stream of questions regarding interest rates, ledger and double-entry bookkeeping methods, and which merchants has offered how much credit.

When the household finances were in a state of order that any bank might have envied, Mrs. Bates, whose accountancy had just been greatly complicated, gently insinuated to Rey that she might take an interest in her right to set a menu. Following an extended consultation with the cook, and then with the accounts, and a brief visit to canvass the neighborhood grocers, Rey proudly presented an entire month’s menu at one go, designed for the greatest possible efficiency, ease, and economy. That it relied upon them eating eel pie twenty-eight nights out of thirty did not seem to trouble her in the slightest, and Mrs. Bates was obliged to invent a feud between the scullery maid and the eel men in order to return to her previous, more palatable method of meal selection.

It was then that Mrs. Bates hit upon the idea of recruiting Mrs. Solo into the organization of her husband’s books. Mrs. Bates herself was not permitted, under any circumstances, to touch Ben’s books except with a duster. She intuited – correctly, as it happened – that the same restrictions would not apply to his wife. When the young lady drifted into the kitchen of an afternoon, plainly aimless and very possibly on the verge of precipitating some disaster, Mrs. Bates affected not to see her, and instead began to complain loudly to the cook about the disorder of the library. The housekeeper noted with great satisfaction, from the corner of her eye, the sudden alertness of Rey’s face and the speed with which she left the room.

Rey had been in the library before, of course, usually to find Ben, and had been so overwhelmed by the great number of books that she had not had time to note whether or not they were orderly. But the truth was that her new position in life had left her feeling not so much bored as very vexingly _unhelpful_ and even _useless,_ and she was very much cheered by the idea of doing something of practical utility. As she went up the stairs, she was imagining how helpful it would be to Ben to have all his books in proper order, how much more easily he would be able to find things, and she felt a great swell of pride, quite in advance of any actual accomplishment.

For the library really was in most profound disorder. Rey stood in the middle of the room for quite some time, simply attempting to get a grasp on the magnitude of the task she had chosen. But there was absolutely nothing she was if she was not dauntless, and she was not to be cowed by any avalanche of books.

She made it her first order of business to separate the books by language – a good quarter of them were in Latin, and these she shelved by themselves (taking a moment to check each for any interesting engravings). Then she split them into fictional and factual works, and set herself to arranging the books of each sector by the author’s last name, taking care to leave room on each shelf for the addition of further works.

She made excellent progress at all of this for three hours, and, with the triumphant satisfaction of having perspired in worthy labor, allowed herself to rest among the books. As she looked about at the advancements made by her efforts, her eyes fell on volume which her method of removing books in increments of five had left on top of a pile. It was entitled _What a Young Husband Ought to Know._

The small wicked sprite within Rey which had lain, for several weeks, almost entirely dormant, woke immediately. The book was quite dusty, and it must have been some time since Ben read it. “Just like him,” Rey said to herself, “to assume his marriage so far in advance, study dutifully, and then forget the text entirely when the occasion arrived! I shall have to read this myself, and examine him sternly to see what he is neglecting.” And Rey set herself avidly to read.

For the most part, she was disappointed to find that it was the ordinary stuff of sermons and tracts – the avoidance of smoking, the importance of exercise, the husband’s obligation to provide a strong moral compass.

“Ben knows this well, and all-too-well, I should say,” she muttered to herself, though she may also have smiled, familiarity having bred indulgence of her husband’s delusion that she required his moral example. However, when she turned the page and began a new chapter – this entitled “The Marital Relation” – the smile faded away to seriousness.

> The false impressions which young people oftentimes get are due to the general absence of truthfulness upon the part of older and more experienced persons in their conversations upon the subject of the sexual relation. Notwithstanding the fact that the questions which gather about the subjects of sex are of vast moment, yet these subjects have been so little written or spoken about in a pure and reverent way that, for the most part, pure-minded and honest people have banished the subject from the round of ordinary conversation. This abandonment of a sacred subject by the pure and truthful has resulted in the general ignorance and prevailing errors. Among the vile and impure the subject is much talked of, and because of the lack of correct knowledge, statements of the most exaggerated, unreasonable and oftentimes impossible are generally accepted as veritable truth. In dealing both with themselves and others, men are more deceitful and untruthful upon this subject than perhaps upon any other. It is because of these facts that the young and inexperienced so often form the most exaggerated and unreliable opinions upon subjects relating to the relation of the sexes.

So far, Rey was inclined to agree. She herself had learned principally from the crude examples of ladies of the night conducting their business in places where a foundling girl might observe them, and though she believed her morals to be entirely up to standard, she was not at all sure that she knew all that there was to be known. Ben seemed to know a great deal more, and perhaps he had learnt it from this book. She read on.

> In addition to what we have said in the previous volume, in reference to the physical, intellectual, moral and sexual differences between men and women, it is necessary now to call the attention of young husbands to the fact that in woman there exists less sexual desire and satisfaction than in man.

Rey set down the book. It had not occurred to her that there might exist between them an imbalance of desire. Surely that would be something to be lamented, and yet the book appeared to treat it as a given fact? She read with mounting confusion and dismay.

> Perhaps of the great majority of women it would be true to say that they are largely devoid of sexual pleasure. In regard to the intensity of the sexual instinct, women might with some accuracy be divided into three classes. The first class, which includes the larger number, is generally supposed to be quite devoid of sexual inclination and feeling. The second class is composed of women who find in the marital relation a moderate and normal pleasure when they are in health, and if indulged in at times which are agreeable to them, and at suitable intervals. This class represents, doubtless, those women who are more normal in this respect than those who belong to either of the other extremes. They constitute the middle class, and probably the largest number. The third class represents the few in whom sexuality presides as a ruling passion. This class is by no means as numerous as some might imagine, and such women should never be married except to men of good health, strong physique, and large powers of endurance.

Once more Rey stopped short. She would assuredly have, if asked, assigned herself to the second class. She felt quite normal in herself, and besides, surely it was a statistical likelihood? But did it not seem likely that Ben had identified her as a woman of this third class? She cast her mind back to his early insistence that she required a husband _like him_ – at the time, she had put this down to vanity, and more lately, to an attempt to head off any potential competition. But – _of good health, strong physique, and large powers of endurance_ – no one could deny that this was a portrait of her husband. 

> When a man with only moderate sexual inclination is united to a woman of this class it is a question which is more to be pitied, the husband whose wife is totally devoid of sexual instinct, or the man whose wife is sexually insatiable.

Rey swallowed.

> There is a theory which assumes that unlimited sexual gratification is essential, and that it is to be sought, wherever and whenever an opportunity can be found. It is scarcely necessary to say that this theory is not worthy of the consideration of fair-minded and decent people. It is contrary to the laws of nature, to the laws of God, and to the laws of all civilized nations. The theory is conceived and born of lust. It has been fathered and fostered by the delusions of ignorant people. It is the child of lust and the parent of sensuality. It is disproven by experience and is condemned by the best medical authority in this country and throughout the world.
> 
> There is a vast amount of vital force used in the production and expenditure of the seminal fluid. Conserved as legitimate control demands it to be, it adds so much, and more to the mental and moral force of the man, because it lifts him to a higher plane of being. Wasted as the incontinence of so many lives allows it to be, and prostituted to the simple gratification of fleshly desire, it weakens and depraves. Thousands of married men are suffering from the effects of excessive sexual indulgence. They drain their physical powers, weaken the intellect, and fail to attain the happiness and grand results which would otherwise be possible to them.
> 
> But the anxious and honest inquirer still asks, How often may I indulge myself? Some physicians are inclined to limit the relation to once a month. A more moderate path might dictate that no man of average health, physical power and intellectual acumen can exceed the bounds of once a week without at least being in danger of having entered upon a life of excess.

Rey shut the book and pushed it away as if it offended her sight. This was by all signs a most serious and respected work of science – the front pages had been filled with the testimonials of doctors! Once a week? She had opened her door to Ben at least five times since last Sunday! She had had no idea that she was doing him such a wrong. He had been pursuing what he perceived as his obligation, to satisfy her intemperate desires, at the expense of his own health!

She finished her work in the library as if in a trance. She heard Ben come in and go into the parlour, but she did not go to him, though they had been on their way to making a habit of his reading the newspaper aloud at this hour. When the gong sounded, she went and ate the fine things (entirely sans eels, thanks to Mrs. Bates) mechanically, and made only rote answers to every question Ben put to her, until he felt himself obscurely rebuked, and faded into silence. When the meal was over, she went directly upstairs and to bed. She heard Ben’s soft knock on the door which communicated between their rooms, but she pulled the covers up to her ears and ignored him.

She was _not_ intemperate, she told herself. Or at least, she needn’t be. Before her marriage, she had lived quite serenely without her husband in her bed. She could do without him for six nights. She could go to sleep without thinking of the warmth of his body, without imagining the softness of his mouth, without remembering the pleasant lassitude that generally fell on them both afterwards…

Except that it wasn’t pleasant for him, she reminded herself. He was exhausting himself. It was for his sake. She pulled the covers all the way up over her head, and willed herself to sleep.

In the morning, she forced herself to give him only the faintest, coldest kiss she could muster before very poorly feigning enthusiasm for her committee work and leaving. She sat silent through the entire meeting, and when it was over she drank tea until she thought she would burst. When Mrs. Han Solo asked whether she would like to go home, she insisted on going for a turn in the park instead, and then was almost unforgivably surly to everyone who stopped to speak to them.

Ben ventured only a few feeble remarks over dinner, which she, in her distraught state of mind, took as proof of the debilitation he was suffering in sacrificing himself to her desires, and she once more rushed upstairs, undressed herself, and went to bed. Between the sheets, she sat stewing. To have offered himself up to demands she had not even verbally made – that he was only assuming she’d make! It was intolerable. Presumptuous and intolerable. When he knocked upon her door, she called out sharply, “You need not trouble yourself on _my_ account,” and put her pillow over her head to cover the sound of any reply he might make. She did not want to speak with him. She did not wish to see him and his liquid dark eyes, or hear his lovely low voice, or – or anything of the sort. She was very out of temper with him. She insisted upon it to herself, and accounted for her restless night in this fashion.

In the morning, he preempted her exit by giving her a stricken look and muttering that he ought to visit his gymnasium. In his absence, she returned to the library, to see if the book had anything further to say on the subject of the three classes of women.

She was frustrated that it had no remarks on the second class of women, who, being normal, evidently required no comment, and no more on the subject of the third than she had already read. There were, however some remarks on the _first_ class of women – that is, those in whom there was no sexual desire whatsoever. The author of the book did not approve of them, either, but he did offer several possible causes of their feelings towards marital relations, which Rey seized upon. “I do not want,” she said to herself, “to become entirely listless and devoid of appetite myself, but if I am so far gone to one extreme, perhaps by navigating towards the other I may arrive at the middle path.”

The three causes cited, after many lines of the bitterest condemnation and reproach, for female sexual indifference, were: tight-lacing, constipation, and the injurious effects of novel-reading. Rey considered. She did not especially want to be crushed, irregular, or ruinously simple-minded. But, again, perhaps if she only went a _little_ in the direction of the dire thing, she might avoid the full evil. She took a deep breath and went downstairs to consult with Mrs. Bates.

Mrs. Bates, always anxious to be helpful and having sensed, over the past two dinners, some growing unhappiness between Mr. and Mrs. Solo, looked up eagerly as the young lady approached. Rey, however, found herself in some difficulty. She could not simply _ask_ for…

“Could we,” she began, “could we perhaps have some food.”

“Indeed,” Mrs. Bates assured her, when she seemed to have stopped at that.

“Could it be – perhaps – could it be,” Rey stammered, at a loss. How could she ask her kindly housekeeper to provide them with unhealthfully rich and difficult food? Rey did not even know what manner of food that would be, and racking her brains, managed some associated phrases from a tract on immoral diet she had once read. “Could it be the sort of thing that – that people who are – too elegant for their own good have? That sort of thing?”

Mrs. Bates looked at her, tilting her smooth orange head with its white cap in puzzlement for a moment. Then her mind hit upon a solution to the confusion she was presented with. “Ah!” she exclaimed eagerly. “You’d like a special meal. I quite understand, quite!” For, in the context of the little snatches she had seen, including Mr. Solo slamming the door on his way out, she had deduced some small estrangement between husband and wife, and concluded that Rey hoped to make things up with Ben by presenting him with an especially tempting meal. “Don’t worry – Cook can have it ready for this evening, even!” She would have to help the cook herself, which did not usually make a part of her idea of a well-ordered household, but in the name of domestic tranquility and happiness, she was willing to go a little out of her way – especially if it meant that Rey might be acquiring more conventional tastes in the way of meals. Rey, for her part, was so grateful to have the embarrassing conversation over with, that she made a short exclamation of devout gratitude and charged back up the stairs to look for an appropriately poisonous novel.

She had her own small collection of novels, of course, but they were all rather exciting – that was why she liked them – and excitement seemed to be the opposite of what was called for. “Bloodshed and bigamy,” her old guardian had called her readings, which was unfair, since several of them were more principally concerned with jewel-theft, lunatic asylums, cannibalism, or pirates. Regardless, they were stimulating, and stimulation was to be avoided, Rey reminded herself, twitching irritably in her clothes as if they itched at her. She ought not to be thinking of thrilling adventures when the most thrilling thing in her own life was the very thing it was necessary she should want less.

And so it was to Ben’s moderate collection of novels that she turned. They were almost entirely by men, and Rey had heard that the worst and silliest novels were all by women; some meditation on the spines, however, reminded her that “George Eliot” had turned out to only have been pretending to be a man, and she chose the first work of the lady’s that came to hand.. Rey was satisfied to see that the first three chapters of the volume she had picked up were entitled “The Workshop,” “The Preaching,” and “After the Preaching” – hardly the stuff of _To the Bitter End_ or _Lady Audley’s Secret._ So it might be enfeebling to her wits, because it was a novel, but at least it seemed likely to be on a wholesome subject, and very gradually paced.

Rey sat down to read, but upon seating herself, realized that she was sitting in Ben’s chair, which was the next thing, surely, to sitting on Ben’s knee, and didn’t the whole room rather smell of Ben? Or did Ben smell of it? Of brass and warm wood and cared-for leather and something faintly sweet, like marzipan – but that was before he began to sweat, of course, when the smell of him turned darker and his skin grew slippery and hard to hold – and this was not at all where her mind ought to be!

It was the library, she was sure. Now that she had tidied it it smelled less of dust and more distractingly like her husband. She took the book into the parlour, and made sure to sit in her own chair, and not in Ben’s. She dutifully read through the chapter titles, and began the book, and was for a moment mercifully transported into a carpenter’s shop, complete with sweet-swelling wood-shavings, warm sun through the windows, and the musical sound of the workmen’s tools. A hymn was transcribed, and Rey relaxed further into the certainty of the novel’s being quite entirely pure, and most probably allegorical. She was about to read on when Mrs. Bates bustled in, and informed her that the coal boy had seen Mr. Ben across the square, and that she ought to go upstairs immediately and dress for dinner. She accompanied this advice with a wink which Rey understood not at all, and bustled back out.

Rey dutifully went upstairs. She had no corsets intended for tight-lacing, but she took a deep breath, and, summoning her maid, picked the one with the stiffest stays and asked to be laced as tightly as possible. Her maid was surprised, but she was a knowledgable girl, and with great effort on both their parts, Rey was confined in some rough approximation of fashionable structure. Occupied as she was in making sure she could still breathe, Rey allowed herself to be put into a dress she hardly noticed, and made her way downstairs for dinner.

Mrs. Bates, directing the business of the sideboard, spared a moment to assure Rey that she looked lovely – which was quite true – but otherwise the lady of the house was left for several minutes quite alone with her thoughts. She knew Ben must be getting dressed himself, and she determinedly resisted the impulse to picture him – even in his shirt-sleeves – no. She reminded herself harshly that the more she thought of him in this way, the more she justified the characterization of herself as a third-class woman.

When he came in, she did her best to greet him with a smile which was warm and chastely loving without being flirtatious or alluring. Unfortunately, she had no very clear picture of how any of those adjectives might translate into her own face, and Ben was alarmed to enter the dining room and find his wife wearing a lovely dress and grimacing as though she smelled something terrible. For a moment, he thought she must be displeased by the dinner, but Mrs. Bates remarked loudly that she had arranged for it herself, and she ate it with, if not relish, at least an even more furious efficiency than was usual for her. 

He thanked her for her consideration, and she replied rather despondently that it was only her duty. He ventured to express that it was delicious to enjoy such an occasional treat for the senses and that he enjoyed it very much, and she agreed with him in bewildering tones of desperation. He, gathering some courage and also the self-mastery required to remove his eyes from the swell of her breasts at the neckline of her dress, expressed that she looked very lovely, and she flung down her dessert fork with a cry of despair and fled. Her breath came so heavily that he feared she would faint, and he attempted to follow her, but was repulsed with an angry motion of her hand, and retreated back to the dining room and a disapproving look from Mrs. Bates, who could only imagine that he had spurned his wife’s attempts to soothe him.

Rey, fairly panting upstairs in her room, tore two hooks on the busk of her corset wrenching herself out of it, and rushed headfirst to the basin to fling cold water over her bare skin. This was absurd. The corset hadn’t helped in the least. If anything, it had made it worse; by forcing hervirtually to gasp for air, it put her in mind of other times she had made herself out of breath, and there was wine at dinner, and Ben’s eyes on her, and the entire business was quite, quite insupportable.

After long minutes of raging up and down in her room, angry with herself for her lack of mental hygiene, she forced herself to be calm. The corset had not helped. Perhaps the dinner would, in time. And there was still the novel. She seated herself on the bed and picked it up again. Presumably the hymn in the carpenter’s shop was being sung by an angelic child, in a sweet and piping child’s voice.

> Such a voice could only come from a broad chest, and the broad chest belonged to a large-boned, muscular man nearly six feet high, with a back so flat and a head so well poised that when he drew himself up to take a more distant survey of his work, he had the air of a soldier standing at ease. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long supple hand, with its broad finger-tips, looked ready for works of skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his name; but the jet-black hair, made the more noticeable by its contrast with the light paper cap, and the keen glance of the dark eyes that shone from under strongly marked, prominent and mobile eyebrows...

Rey threw the book across the room.

What was she to do? At any moment now, a man like that would be in the very next room, and she, knowing just exactly the skills to which his finger-tips were suited, was supposed to keep cooly to her bed when he knocked and offered those skills (and others besides!) to her? Her, with her body so intolerably hot all over and practically _aching_ for him? 

He was her lawful spouse, a voice within her suggested in seductively rational tones. He was of the age of reason. If he offered himself of his own free will, why should she not admit him just as freely as she wanted to?

But she remembered the words of the book. _Thousands of married men are suffering from the effects of excessive sexual indulgence. They drain their physical powers, weaken the intellect, and fail to attain the happiness and grand results which would otherwise be possible to them._ He was wearing himself out, and he must know it, for he must have read the book; the pages had been cut and the spine had not been fresh. And he did it because he thought she would demand it of him! On the one hand, she was furious with him, to think she was so heartlessly insatiable as to demand her own pleasure at such a price to him; on the other hand, she trembled at the thought of the damage she might already have unknowingly done to his health. Between these two extremes of emotion, she should have easily been able to banish desire from her thoughts, and yet her ear sharpened for the sound of his foot in the hall, and she knew that even the sound of his step would seduce her, and that she would be utterly unable to resist even the softest brush of his hand on the communicating door.

There was only one thing to do. The temptation must be disallowed. She waited until she heard him in his room, and then, in the first quiet moment when he could not fail to hear it, she picked up the key, slipped it tremblingly into the keyhole, and turned the lock against him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the true spirit of the Victorian serial, if you want the exciting stuff, you'll have to come back for Chapter 2.
> 
> * * *
> 
> It was fairly standard, in wealthy homes, for husband and wife to have separate rooms with a communicating door between them.
> 
> Eel pie is not only disgusting, it was the lower-class economy staple of the time, sort of the Victorian equivalent of rice-and-spam.
> 
> The quoted marriage manual text is a mash-up of two books, _What a Young Husband Ought to Know_ and _What a Young Wife Ought to Know._ In editing them for use here, I've slandered the authors a little bit by taking them out of context; several of these passages are actually parts of chapters which are essentially arguing against marital rape, which was not illegal in the west at the time. (Not that arguing "Don't rape your wife; it's bad for your health," is a great look from a modern standpoint either, but in fairness they also put forward the "Don't rape your wife; it's an awful thing to do" argument first.) The terrible science and the constrictive disapproval and policing of women's sexuality are just as bad as they look, though.
> 
> The quoted novel is _Adam Bede,_ by George Eliot, aka Mary Ann Evans. George Eliot was also the author of an essay entitled "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," about which you can probably get into a fight in many English departments if you feel so inclined.


	2. Difficulties Resolved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As she consumed her mutton in private efficiency, Rey meditated grimly that perhaps, since she contributed nothing but poor manners to her committees and disgrace to her husband, it would be for the best if she simply stayed in her room at all times. “Or better,” she muttered to herself, as she took from her hair the pins she had put in with such determination, “I might move into the attic of my own volition, as a pre-emptive strategy, and allow Ben to begin his search for a second wife promptly” — though surely this remark was exactly the sort of proof of the unhealthful effect of novel-reading that medical authorities have in mind when they fulminate against it.

It was a restless night, and there were more to come. Ben ate two bites of breakfast, in total silence, and left the house before she could go out herself to the board rooms of the Ladies’ Auxiliaries. There, at least, she thought she could distract herself with annoyance from her feelings of guilt, but she found herself looking at the virtuous charitable ladies and wondering how often _they_ enjoyed the company of their husbands. Of course this only doubled and redoubled her guilty feelings, both for the certainty that they were more considerate wives than she was, and for the impertinence of imagining distinguished philanthropic personages in their nightclothes. 

At night, she once more locked her door, and the day after, Ben did not appear at breakfast at all; he had left a note telling her that there were some tasks which required his particular attention. She ate her breakfast, and tried to be grateful that he had the energy to be ambitious in the morning; she told herself that her abstention, no matter how painful it was for her, was producing results. Setting herself to repair the corset she had damaged two nights before rather than burden her maid with the shameful depredations of her temper

Despite that, it was with great difficulty that she locked the communicating door that night; he made no audible attempt to come to her, and somehow that only made it worse, so that she felt she turned the lock less against him than upon herself, to keep her from going through the door to him and crying like a spoiled child for what she wanted.

It had always been her custom, ingrained since a childhood timed out by church bells, to rise early, but on the morning that came next, she lay abed, moving only to thank the maid who lit the fire. She was wondering if she might not actually be unwell when she was startled upright out of her miserable reverie by the sound of her husband bellowing down the backstairs.

“MRS. BATES! WHAT THE DEVIL HAVE YOU DONE TO MY BOOKS?”

The rest was lost in the clatter of him descending into the kitchen, but Rey distinctly heard him say LIBRARY and RUINED, and she could very exactly picture the stormy face he must be wearing. He did not like what she had done. She had tried so hard to be useful, and she had only been harmful. It was the story of her failure as a wife, writ small, only Ben would never say so to her face; he was only saying what he was now because he thought Mrs. Bates had done it.

Rey desperately wanted to lie down on the bed and wail for the wretched ruins of her ambitions to be a good wife and a good mistress of the household, but even in the midst of her unhappiness she knew she could not allow Mrs. Bates to take the blame for her own errors. She threw a dressing gown over her nightdress and ran in stocking feet to the kitchen where Mrs. Bates was, from a position of strategic strength at the top of the pantry ladder, high-mindedly ignoring the master of the house as he sputtered.

“Ben!” Rey cried. “Ben, you mustn’t shout at her; she never touched your books.” Mrs. Bates managed to give a little nod of vindication without quite deigning to acknowledge Ben. “I did it. It was my idea.”

She set her chin, prepared to be raged at, but his face crumpled like a fallen soufflé. “Oh,” he said very quietly. “Oh. I see.” And he lowered his head and went hurriedly past her and up the stairs.

“There,” Mrs. Bates said with satisfaction. “I knew he wouldn’t hold it against _you.”_

Rey did not see it in this light at all. Ben hated what she had done with the library, but he would not even tell her what she had done wrong. He regarded her as beyond correction — _beneath_ correction — 

“Benjamin Solo, come back here!” she cried, running after him. But he was faster than she, with a head start and long legs, and he needed only his outercoat and hat to be out the door, whereas she ought hardly have come to the kitchen as undressed as she was. No wonder, she thought bitterly, as she remounted the steps to her room, that he had not even thought it worth his time to tell her where her error had been. She had come down half-dressed, her hair undone like a slattern; he could not expect from her even the propriety he expected of his servants.

She sat on her bed, worrying at her lip, half despondency and half rage. She would never be anything in his eyes but a rescued urchin, which was only fair since it seemed she acted quite exactly like a randy guttersnipe, but which was also monstrously unjust, because she struggled mightily to be as proper and gracious a lady as anybody, at great sacrifice to herself, as was demonstrated by her having denied herself his company at night for five days! Nearly a week!

It was in this confounding mood that she sewed the torn hook of her corset busk back into place, and it was in this mood that Mrs. Bates, leaning her head cautiously around the door, found her. The good housekeeper, hoping to gain some enlightenment as to the nature of the situation by vaguely inquiring whether there were any orders about the books, received the thoroughly incoherent answer that no, there were not, “unless I should take them all out and throw them about haphazard like he had them before because evidently fine gentlemen do that so they know all about wild ragamuffins like me except he doesn’t, I’ve shown him, he hasn’t had to _trouble himself_ with me for days since I locked the door and saw to that and that is improvement right there and I did it myself, he didn’t even think to tell me but I’m not so incorrigibly ignorant that I can’t _read,_ thank you Mr. Solo, _thank you very much._ ”

With this, she burst into tears and demanded to be left alone.

Mrs. Bates, naturally, was a very busy woman, but it was her conclusion, after some thought, that whatever the matter was here, it demanded her close attention and best efforts to resolve it. With this determination, she meditated on young Mrs. Solo’s remarks, went into the library and examined the scene, as it were, of the crime, and called the young maid who lit the fires and took the laundry for a close interrogation. 

Rey, after much angry weeping, determined to have it out with Ben. She put on her most severe dress, navy blue wool with a high neck of dense white lace and only a little flouncing at the back. She drew her hair up in her most severe style, and sat herself stiffly in her chair to wait for him. As she tried to imagine what she would say to him, how she could lay forth the evidence of her own ability and will to improve without admitting how terribly hard it was to do without him, he disobliged her by sending word that he was dining with his father at Mr. Solo the elder’s club, and would be home late. Rey received this with a painful swallow, and, pinching her trembling lips together, declared in a tight voice that she would have her dinner sent up to her room, please.

As she consumed her mutton in private efficiency, Rey meditated grimly that perhaps, since she contributed nothing but poor manners to her committees and disgrace to her husband, it would be for the best if she simply stayed in her room at all times. “Or better,” she muttered to herself, as she took from her hair the pins she had put in with such determination, “I might move into the attic of my own volition, as a pre-emptive strategy, and allow Ben to begin his search for a second wife promptly” — though surely this remark was exactly the sort of proof of the unhealthful effect of novel-reading that medical authorities have in mind when they fulminate against it.

At least, she thought, hearing a heavy, masculine step on the stair, she could take the usual pre-emptive step of locking the communicating door. She rose, and went for the key. It was not on the chest of drawers where she was accustomed to find it. She looked in the cabinet. It was not there. The steps crossed the hall and entered the next room. The key was not in the lock. It was not on the floor. It was not in her sewing box, or on the little shelf with her books, or on her writing desk. There was a heavy silence from the next room, and a terrible suspicion dawned in Rey’s heart. The key was not in the pockets of her dressing gown, and the silence continued, and Rey’s temper flared. 

“Ben,” she said warningly. “What have you done?”

The silence on the other side of the door continued, and Rey’s heart lit with anger. He had lied to her, fled from her, and now he had taken from her what she had come to see as her one means of proving herself. To sacrifice himself to the depravity he saw in her was bad enough, to stoop this – the high-handedness of him was intolerable, and she was suddenly determined to have no more of it. She flung open the door and marched into her husband’s room.

He was standing in his shirt-sleeves in the middle of the room, his cuffs undone and his tie untied. His head was bent low, but when Rey opened the door, it jerked up, and, to his wife’s immense surprise, he took a single look at her furious countenance and fell down upon his knees.

“Rey,” he said hoarsely, “Rey, I am sorry.”

She stopped still. She had anticipated something of this heavy and sorrowful demeanor, but not this abject posture. Her expectation had been something nearer to a paternal weariness; he seemed genuinely repentant. Had he considered the same things she had, and decided with his independent intelligence that he had gone too far in attempting to manage her without her knowledge? “Well,” she said, a little hesitant, “I suppose I am glad. But Ben, you know my principal anxiety these past days has only been for your own health.”

“I know,” he said, despondent. “You are a generous woman. You would not punish me further.”

Rey stared at him, nonplussed. His dark hair shone in the yellow light of his bedside lamp, and his long face was shadowed. “Punish you… further?”

He turned his eyes up to her with a pitiful look. “I know I have merited worse from you, Rey. But — my books — ” He gave a rather shaken laugh. “I ought to have known you would know just where best to strike that I should not forget the lesson.”

She took half a step towards him, reaching out her hand as though through total darkness. “Ben, I tried to tidy your library to _please_ you.” He blinked at her, and she found herself drawing nearer; his face was so dear to her, and so puzzled and sad. “I thought it would be a thing a good wife would do, to neaten your books. But I found one by a doctor – oh, Ben, you _must not_ endanger your health – ”

He seized her skirt in both his hands, twisting the dark blue folds in his big pale hands. “Rey. Rey, I swear to you, I did it only once, only that first night; I have not done it since. I won’t again. Forgive me, Rey.”

“What do you mean?” she cried. “You have been exhausting yourself! The book said we ought not to be — having marital relations — more than once a week, that it would drain you, and damage your health. I cannot render you ill only to satisfy my own disgraceful whims, Ben, and it pained me _horribly_ that you thought I might knowingly consent to such a thing — if I had known, I would have made you keep your bed long before now!”

He stared up at her, dumbstruck, his hands still tangled in her skirt, his jaw open. “My — Rey. Sweetheart. Did you bar me from your room… for fear of my health?”

“Yes! The book was by a doctor; all kinds of doctors attested to its virtue in the front pages! It said that a lustful wife was a burden and that it would enervate any man alive to do it more than once a week — ”

She broke off; his hands were suddenly hauling on her dress, forcing her down to where he knelt, seizing her tight to himself. “Tell me,” he said, and his voice was low, and his arms were hard around her. “Do I seem _enervated_ to you?” She could not catch her breath to answer him; he was tracing the shape of her waist with ravenous fingers as he stared at her face. “And do I have a _lustful_ wife? Have you missed me, Rey? I do not disgust you?”

She did not mean to pop the studs from his collar, but they rattled on the floor all the same, and her fingers stroked the warm, rough skin of his throat. “Disgust me? Why would you disgust me? Why did you think I would punish you?”

“You did not — hear me do it?” His face was mottled; she shook her head, and felt his throat bob beneath her fingers before he buried his face in the lace of her dress. “I came to your door — I was — too ready to see you, have you; I was too sure of my welcome. When you did not let me in, I — it was a moment of madness, but I — I defiled myself, Rey.” He drew his head back again, and she could see the water shine in his eyes. “But it was only the once. I swear it. I have been in agony since — you did not hear me? You have not been punishing me?”

She stroked his hair back from his face. “I told you — I thought it would please you to have a tidy library.”

“But your dress the other night,” he protested, and his hands about her waist grew rougher, following the lines of boning beneath her clothes. “And when you came downstairs in such fetching disarray — just how you used to torture me before we were married. And how loudly you locked your room!”

“I thought you looked down on me for how I desired you! I thought you thought me a low and vulgar woman; I thought you thought me beyond reform, and were sacrificing yourself to my appetites — ”

Once more her words were broken off by his manhandling of her; he lifted her bodily and laid her out face-down upon the bed, and she felt his fingers unhooking and unbuttoning with an urgency such as her maid never displayed. “What appetites, Rey?” Her petticoats strings were pulled apart; his fingers dug into the laces of her corset and tore. “Tell me. Did you want me in your bed? Did you miss me, pretty wife?”

“Yes,” she cried, kicking her heels, for she was half pettish to be treated like a dressmaker’s mannequin and half eager to be out of her clothes as he was to have her out of them. “Yes, I missed you.”

He had pulled down her petticoats and wrenched open her dress and corset so that she lay in them like a walnut in its cracked shell. “Do you see this?” He was running his hands over her backside again and again, and Rey, transported by his caresses and the frenzy of his voice, refrained from noting that in fact she could see nothing but his bedspread. “I am the luckiest, most fortunate man alive. You are a Venus, and you are my wife. And you say you missed me, Rey? Tell me again.”

“I ached for you,” she confessed. It did not seem wrong now, not when his palms stroked the back of her thighs and his breath burned so sweetly hot against her skin, shuddering at her admission.

“Oh,” he murmured. “You ached for me? I ached for you. My fingers itched and my mouth thirsted and my cock was a shame and a torment. I could have had you on the kitchen table when you came downstairs in your dressing gown. It would have been so easy. And your hair was all around your shoulders. Just like this.” He gathered her loosened tresses in his hands, weaving his fingers through to stroke her neck beneath, where her skin prickled at his touch. “If ever you do not want me, you must look me in my eyes and tell me no. I swear to you I will go away as meek as a lamb, but do not ever try to save me from myself again. I could have you with every meal, like bread, and still be hungry for you at night.”

His trousered knee pressed her bare one wide, and the fingers of his other hand found her where she was wet. Rey moaned as they stroked and stroked her, and his forehead came to rest against her back, his breath shuddering against her the blade of her shoulder. “I thought I would go mad for the lack of you before I had you, but it goes harder with me now than ever. Now that I know just how tight your little cunt is, just how warm and wet and _sweet_ … you must not blame me for my weakness, Rey.” She could not find it in her to blame him for anything, while he stroked her like that. “I tell you, the poor substitution of my hand was punishment enough.”

A wicked tingle stole through her. “Was it?” she gasped. “Ought I not to punish you more? Stand up, Benjamin Solo.”

He groaned like one of the damned, but he obeyed her. She turned, striping herself free of her dress and her corset. He stood by the bed, trembling and sweating like a racehorse, his collar gone and his trousers showing plainly the state of his excitement. Rey lifted her chemise over her head and watched him lick his lips. “I believe you should stand very still,” she told him sternly, and kissed the naked dimple of his throat.

One by one she took his shirt studs from him, until his shirt hung loose around him; she touched the flesh beneath as if he were made of glass, and felt him tremble under her hands. “Did you think of me? With your hand upon yourself?”

“Of course,” he answered, hoarse and dazed, as she toyed with the fastenings of his trousers.

“Oh? Did you think of how you meant to fuck me, if I had only opened my door?”

“Yes.” Her hand caressed him through his clothes and he twitched, his head lolling. “I thought of you upon your back, with your knees spread wide for me. The softness of your thighs.”

Rey reclined upon his bed, and held her thighs apart as he liked to, with her fingers splayed and grasping as his so often were. “Like this?”

“Just like that. I thought of your breasts — bouncing.”

His wife strummed gently at one breast. “Like this?”

“Like that. Like that. And your taste, Rey; I thought of the taste of your cunt on my tongue.”

Rey stretched her arms languidly over her head. “To think of me in such vivid detail – it seems only a little different from the real thing, except that I had no benefit of it. So I suppose I may forgive you, if you will give it to me now.” With that, she held out her hands in invitation, and he flew to her, to latch his lips against her cunt. Everything that he had told her in words, he told her now again with the near-soundless action of his lips and tongue. With his mouth between her legs he blandished and assailed her, seemed both masterful and utterly lost to himself. He swept over her again and again until she smothered a wail, then slipped down with soft hunger to press deeper into her, drawing her legs close around his ears. When he looked up, his chin and nose shone wet and his eyes were wild. 

“You came to my room,” he panted. “Say I may have you. Or else brain me with the poker. I will go mad if you go away and shut me out now.”

“I will go mad myself if you do not finish what you have begun,” she retorted, feeling herself clench for want of him. “Fuck me, rub me, have me however you please; I have wanted you for days, so do not stop!”

With his hands he pressed her knees back at the same time that he pressed a kiss on her mouth, tart with her own taste. “Wanted me?” he said against her lips, “No, Rey, I think you have needed me.” His fingers fumbled with his trousers, and then he shuddered and gasped as his naked flesh slid against hers, and he groaned, “God knows I’ve needed you. There, keep your knees like that; hold them tight; let me see it — ”

It was easier now to take his prick than it had been the first time, easier still with how badly she wished to, but still her mouth fell open as he pushed inside her. After the first desperate thrust, which made him choke and his lips form a silent curse, he leaned a little back, and looked down at her. “There,” he whispered breathlessly, as his thumb came to rest on her clitoris. “Now I can fuck you. And rub you. And have you just as I please.”

It seemed that what pleased him was to fuck her hard and steadily with his eyes fixed upon her as he pressed her pleasure from her with his thumb. He motion of his hands and hips was sweet and familiar to her, and she sank into the enjoyment of them, writhing and sighing, pleading with him that he should not stop, never stop. In return he whispered to her that he never meant to, not while she still needed it. “I can see, I can see how badly you needed my prick, Rey; I can tell by how sweetly you take it. Keep hold of your knees, sweet, and spend for me. Let me watch you do it.”

The strokes of his cock and his thumb alike became firmer until she had no choice but to obey, all but weeping with the relief of the ache that had plagued her. Ben’s thrusts became frenzied, and his pretty words all grunts and throaty groans, until she felt him twitch and spurt inside her, and his body fell on her with his sweaty black locks against her shoulder and his mouth panting and kissing in slow delirium against her breast.

After the long moment of accomplished enjoyment passed, his sleepy weight recalled her to herself. “Ben,” she said hesitantly, brushing his hair from his face, “and that did not… exhaust you? You do not feel weakened?”

He rolled himself to the bed beside her, stretching and yawning. “It tired me, certainly. But no more than I am used to from any vigorous exercise. You are still thinking of that book?”

“I cannot help it. I do not want you to be unwell.”

He pulled her from the tangle of her clothing in which he had fucked her and into his arms. “Instructive as books are, Rey, it would be irresponsible not to have consulted a physician in person both before and after getting married. Dr. Kalonia has examined me, and cleared me for any and all exertions of which I’m physically capable.”

“Really? Any at all?”

“Well, provided I maintain a wholesome diet and avoid stimulants, yes.”

“In that case,” she said firmly, “I shall see to it that you do.”

“And you will let my books stack and gather dust as I prefer them to?”

“If you insist.”

He did insist, and it caused her no grief to obey. She expected that Mrs. Bates might object, but to her surprise that lady treated the matter of the library with a studied indifference on every following day. Though Mrs. Bates did not remark on it, the household was once more as content as it had been before Rey’s fatal mission to rearrange her husband’s books, and that was after all the highest mission of every household.

(And it was, Mrs. Bates reflected with satisfaction, most proper that the housekeeper should carry _all_ the keys to the house, so that the needs of the family could be properly anticipated by more intelligent persons. She was a most competent housekeeper.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Masturbation is of course not harmful no matter what you're thinking about, but in fidelity to the time-period, I have tried to faithfully report the Victorian attitude towards it, which was negative in the extreme. There is basically not a bit of good science anywhere in this story, and I apologize.


End file.
